


The Stolen Moment

by dollylux



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Reunions, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 17:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17329439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: Magnus remembers. Taako needs him.(set during the 4th Lunar Interlude, immediately after inoculation and Magnus's reappearance.)





	The Stolen Moment

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on my third relisten, but I haven't quite made it into this part of the story on this round. Forgive any small details that are missing or any skew in the timeline. I just needed this moment to happen; the details are unimportant, yanno?

Magnus has made a career out of not thinking too hard. Instinct drives him from the moment he wakes up to whenever he gets knocked unconscious by the latest big bad; thinking doesn’t come into play too often.

His mouth is still coated with the baby voidfish’s ichor as his mind is flooded with nearly thirteen decades of memories. He staggers on his feet and is kept standing by leaning against the wall. He’s stunned into inaction, unable to do much beyond tremble in place, his head pounding as new doors and windows are thrown open in his mind, giving birth to memories and faces and revelations that don’t seem to have an end. Even in this amorphous, impossible world in which he lives, this single moment of knowledge feels like it might burn him from within, sending an explosion of ashes and regrets and almosts into the atmosphere.

So much has happened. Too much. There simply isn’t a beginning here, and the ending is too painful to recall right now. 

The wall under his palm is solid and cool, his hand both familiar to him and newborn. Like the tingle of limbs waking up.

There isn’t enough room in his chest for the number of pieces his heart has just shattered into.

“Magnus.”

The din of the apocalypse is prosaic at this point, and so Magnus can now focus on the sounds beyond it, the ones that have never been rote, the ones that used to comprise such a bright, encompassing part of his world:

The strange musicality of Taako’s voice.

His voice always breaks on Magnus’s name right in the middle, a wave against rock. The word is shouted and emotional, two things that Taako isn’t comfortable with, ever. At least not this Taako that the world chewed up and gave back to Magnus.

The director’s office blurs, the sounds of shouts and death and panic falling to background noise as hot tears spill down Magnus’s cheeks, the first tears on untouched skin.

Impossible to marry, in a single moment, what they were to each other before and what they are here, right now. 

Taako looks as overwhelmed as Magnus has ever seen him, and he realizes now that he has years upon years of knowing him to draw from. He looks broken, brittle enough to be snapped in half, and it’s a cruelty that Magnus can’t bear that Taako is here at all, in the middle of this sudden war. He’s too good for this, too bright of a light, too small and too important.

Magnus feels every muscle in his body tense, and he sucks in enough air to fill his lungs entirely. He takes off at a dead run across the room, slicing and delivering death as he goes, his eyes only straying from Taako out of necessity and only very briefly.

The sword in his grip shivers with violence even as he comes to a dead stop in front of Taako, still standing so tall over him, so much broader, and yet he’s very, very aware of Taako’s age now in a way he never has been before, very aware of his strength and his intelligence and his brilliance that makes Taako more powerful than Magnus could ever be.

It’s not that Taako needs protecting. It’s that Magnus loves him too much not to try.

“I-I, M-Magnus, I c-c-c-c…” Taako’s trembling uncontrollably now, his sudden knowledge much more to bear, surely more painful than Magnus could ever fathom. Taako had lost Lup. He’d lost Magnus himself. He’d lost everything and everyone.

Magnus can feel the heat of battle at his back, can hear the whirs of NO-3113’s body and Killian’s shouts and the rush of everyone trying to fight back the tide of The Hunger that seems to be without end. Everyone is moving, everyone is doing _something_ , all except the two of them.

If you’d asked Magnus last year or last week or even yesterday what he would do in such a situation, the answer would have always been exactly the same, word for word. The Magnus of this very second knows more; he knows better.

He sheaths his borrowed sword and reaches for Taako, lifting him up into his arms and onto his body and seeks out a safe space, a place to hide, just for a minute.

Taako wraps around him in a way that feels beyond right, that feels preordained and inevitable. The warmth of his shivering body is a comfort Magnus didn’t know he was missing. He wraps powerful arms around Taako and pushes into the labyrinth of Lucretia’s hidden chambers, seeking out a pocket of space, a--

“Oh, shit. Duh,” he says, stopping right where he is and reaching into the folds of Taako’s clothes because he knows he can do that, because it’s a part of who they are to each other. He finds what he’s looking for and suddenly they’re in quiet, echoing tranquility, no sounds beyond them but the burble of a fountain and tasteful harp music. A corner of the pocket spa is occupied by nothing but a giant pile of fluffy pillows and low lighting, and Magnus heads there and drops to his knees beside them, lowering Taako to the plush, makeshift bed.

“Don’t fuckin’ leave me,” Taako says suddenly, the words vicious but only because he means them wholly, no humor to soften the edges. Hands grab at Magnus, clutching at his clothes and pulling him down, towards Taako. He rids himself of all the weapons he can reach and gives in, letting Taako lead him where he needs him, and that’s how Magnus finds himself braced above his little elf, elbows digging into pillows to keep him upright enough to see Taako’s face, but the rest of him is pressed against him, all but crushing Taako into the soft cushions below.

“Why did you _leave_ me?” Taako asks, just as broken as before, but the moodrings of his eyes flood with tears this time, maybe now that they’ve carved a moment out of the chaos to breathe. Magnus doesn’t answer, can’t answer, but he pushes Taako’s hat off to get to his sweaty, long hair beneath, the braid containing it all loose enough that Magnus can stroke strands of it back, short nails gliding over his scalp, thick, firm fingers tucking stray tendrils behind elegantly pointed ears that he rubbed and kissed and tugged on and loved for one hundred years. 

“I’m sorry,” is all Magnus has in him, the only words to say in this moment, in this space where they find themselves caught in the middle of a century of love and everything they have or haven’t been for each other in the last long year. Roughened thumbs slide as gentle as they can beneath Taako’s ageless eyes, the purple and teal of them glimmering as tears spill helplessly and Magnus swipes them away as soon as they’re born.

Unfair that Taako should ever feel pain. Unthinkable that he’s rarely felt anything but.

“I never would’ve wanted to. I never would’ve done it on my own.” Clumsy words, not quite right. He rushes ahead, tries again. “Only wiping my fucking mind could’ve made me leave you. And I still found my way back. Didn’t I? We figured it out. In this whole, massive plane, we found each other again. Didn’t we?”

Taako nods, a small movement, a childish one. He sniffles and Magnus echoes the sound and doesn’t have time to care that he’s crying, too, that they’re clutching at each other in a pocket dimension during the end of the world like lost little boys. He needs this as much as Taako does.

It’s strange, how he can catch the rhythm of Taako’s thoughts. It’s not as vivid as when they could speak telepathically, but it’s there, and it’s unmistakable; the thought of Julia flashes through his own mind and in Taako’s eyes, and then she’s gone again, just as fast. Not the time to talk of her or even think of her. But something in Taako’s gaze speaks of infinite understanding, of forgiveness and a hard earned wisdom. The soft hand that slides over Magnus’s cheek just punctuates it.

No words left, not a sound. Magnus closes his eyes and sighs, the weight of the world slipping from his shoulders, just for a moment. His forehead presses to Taako’s as he relaxes on top of him, giving Taako his weight just the way he likes it, the way he needs to feel safe. He’s in the embrace of lithe arms and those long dancer legs where Magnus has spent so much time, and there isn’t a single thing in existence that could drag him away right now.

_We’ll find Lup. We’ll get her back and we’ll fix all this and we’ll figure out how to be happy again. All of us._

Small, animal movements, Magnus’s nose sliding along Taako’s jaw and Taako furrowing into the heated space between Magnus’s neck and shoulder, all of it saying those things, conveying unspeakable sentiments. Their vast, unbreakable love.

When mouth touches mouth, one million threads snap into place between them, and they shimmer with renewed strength.


End file.
